South Africa is proving that governments in poor cities can provide water and collect payment without turning off the water spigot. Detroit and Baltimore might consider exploring models like this that have been successfully tested in even more challenging settings, writes Julia Pollak (cohort '12).

Undocumented children are entitled to free primary and secondary public education everywhere in the United States, regardless of their legal status. But when they finish high school, their options for college vary depending on the state in which they live, writes Prof. Robert Bozick.

Worldwide, nearly 800 women die every day due to mostly preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. More than half of these deaths occur in fragile states torn by armed conflict and generalized violence, writes student Mahal Woldetsadik (cohort '13).

An upcoming Supreme Court ruling regarding the Affordable Care Act could impact millions of Americans, write professors Katherine Carman and Christine Eibner. Are Americans aware of the court case? And if so, what do they know about it?

An investigation revealed that the TSA has failed in contraband testing, at a 95 percent rate. This shouldn't be perceived as an indictment of TSA workers. writes alum Jack Riley (cohort '88), but it may be an indictment of the particular assignments they've been given.

The 2014 Ebola outbreak was the most severe of its kind in history, writes Pardee RAND student Yemi Okunogbe (cohort '13). At the height of the crisis, there were 800 to 1,000 new reported cases per week in Africa across the three most heavily affected countries. As of the last week of May, there were only 12 confirmed cases. Now the question is, What must be done to prevent and mitigate future crises of this nature?

Leadership, coordination, communication, and involvement of local stakeholders are critical to an informed response to natural disasters, writes Prof. Melinda Moore. Improved disaster management in Nepal could help limit the suffering of impacted communities and help secure a more successful recovery in the long run.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that young people who later identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual are bullied more than their peers as early as 5th grade. Alum Mark Schuster (cohort '91), Chief of General Pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital, led the study and discusses his findings.

Lessons learned through the analysis of this most recent Ebola outbreak, as well as other disease outbreaks, can have far-reaching consequences, helping authorities to both improve the continuing, ongoing response and plan for the best possible response to future threats. In this commentary, RAND president Michael Rich highlights several toolkits developed by Pardee RAND students and faculty.

Fuel tankering is carrying excess fuel on an aircraft when flying from origins where fuel is less expensive than at the destination. Tankering fuel to a conflict zone like Afghanistan is almost always cost-effective, writes Prof. Christopher Mouton, but the story is more complex elsewhere due to how fuel is purchased and resold within the DoD itself.

It is always exciting to see our students put their knowledge to work outside of RAND and experience what it's like to work in organizations in their fields of interest. To that end, Pardee RAND is happy to announce funding for three external fellowships.

Chinese pressure on South Korea not to allow deployment of a terminal high-altitude air defense (THAAD) defense missile system has become a major regional security issue. Alum Bruce Bennett (cohort '75) answers a Q&A on what might it mean if the U.S. deploys it anyway.

Next to ethnic and religious predilections, security is by far the biggest issue for Nigerians in Saturday's election, writes Tobi Oluwatola (cohort '12). For more than 50 years, since Nigeria's independence from British rule, its military has played an important role in peacekeeping across the continent. Paradoxically, the country has struggled with an insurgency within its own borders.

Through the Pardee Initiative, Pardee RAND students and RAND researchers conduct extensive work and write about issues of global human development around the world. An interactive map allows users to learn more about—and more easily access—that research.

The Netherlands Research and Documentation Centre (WODC) asked RAND Europe to assess the feasibility of conducting a full analysis of the size, scope and potential influence of foreign funding to Islamic institutions in the Netherlands. Pardee RAND student Gursel Aliyev (cohort '13) helped work on this project as part of his on-the-job training with RAND.

Single parents head 10.4 percent of households with children across Europe — 20.4 percent in the UK — and the socioeconomic gap between single- and two-parent households continues to grow. Accessible and flexible work policies are needed to improve employment conditions for single parents, especially mothers.

Depression is the leading cause of disability throughout the world and is especially prevalent among low-income African countries, where 75 percent of the people who suffer from mental illness do not have easy access to the mental health care they need, writes Mahlet A. Woldetsadik (cohort '13).

President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing has done a great service by providing dozens of sound recommendations—good ideas that could help avoid another Ferguson. Now we need good implementation to go along with them.

Ukraine's struggle to keep afloat economically has been daunting, as its parliament has fallen into disarray and failed to enact major economic reforms. Ukrainian lawmakers could help by dealing better with the national budget but their recent deliberations inspired little public confidence, writes Olena Bogdan (cohort '12).

Demonstrations in Greece and elsewhere suggest that the European public may have little sympathy for governments not devoting most efforts to domestic discontent and foreign indebtedness, writes Professor Steven Popper. But the longtime downward trends in European defense spending matter now that Russia has chosen to flex its military might, diminished though it may be.

The ideological gap separating the Republican and Democratic parties in Congress has grown dramatically wider in recent decades, write Alum Jesse Sussell (cohort '10) and former RAND president James Thomson. An analysis of the presidential vote in congressional districts over the last 60 years finds that the degree to which most districts are different from the “average” district has grown, supporting the theory that polarization stems from geographic clustering.

Harvard's Nathan Nunn examines the descendants of the 17th century Kuba Kingdom in central Africa to understand the effects of the kingdom's level of political development on political and social norms today.

Dr. Robert Ross, president and CEO of the California Endowment, presented the keynote speech at the 9th annual L.A. Policy Symposium. The event's theme was "Social Determinants of Health: Non-medical interventions that affect population health" and activities included presentations by policy researchers and practitioners from the LA area, as well as recruiters from the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme.